Almond crop takes downward turn

Tuesday

Jul 2, 2013 at 12:01 AM

California's almond crop, which accounts for about 80 percent of world production, is expected to come in this year at 1.85 billion pounds, down nearly 8 percent from earlier predictions, U.S. farm officials announced Monday.

Reed Fujii

California's almond crop, which accounts for about 80 percent of world production, is expected to come in this year at 1.85 billion pounds, down nearly 8 percent from earlier predictions, U.S. farm officials announced Monday.

That had an immediate impact on prices, sending them up about 30 cents a pound, said Dave Phippen, an almond grower and processor in the Ripon/Manteca area.

However, he discounted the annual forecasting process - underwritten by the industry and produced by U.S. Department of Agriculture experts.

"Anything you do today is a speculation about what you might and might not have," he said.

It won't be for another six months, after the harvest is over and nuts have been shelled and warehoused, until an accurate crop size can be calculated.

The 2012 harvest was 1.89 billion pounds and the USDA a month ago had predicted a 2 billion pound harvest this fall, based on a telephone survey of almond farmers.

A sampling from nearly 900 almond trees statewide found that the average number of nuts per tree was down by about 5 percent and that the nuts were small, "the lowest average kernel weight in 40 years."

"Nut size is the secret, to me, of the whole crop," Phippen said. "If you have 12 nuts and they're really big, you're going to have lot bigger crop than if you have 12 nuts and they're really small."

Of course, the scale of the California crop is much larger. Given the average nut size of 1.36 grams found in the USDA sample, it should be something north of 600 billion individual almonds.

This week's heat wave could contribute to an even smaller crop, as the still-maturing nuts may fail to gain their full size potential, said Phil Brumley, a Ripon almond grower and agricultural consultant.

"This will also impact nut size if you don't maintain adequate levels of moisture in the soil profile," he said Monday.

For proper growth and development, almond trees need moisture of as much as 5 or 6 feet below the surface.

Brumley said he would have guessed the crop would be larger than the latest forecast.

"I'm kind of surprised," he said. "I'm seeing somewhat of a fairly decent crop on a number of orchards."

While higher prices will benefit almond farmers who have nuts to sell, Brumley said they could also drive away customers.

"We've developed this market now that requires X number of pounds, and if the price starts getting too high, they start looking at competing products at a lower price," he said.